Soc 120 - Evolution of Formal Orgainization

Evolution of Formal Organizations

SOC 120

September 4, 2011

Evolution of Formal Organizations

In today's business market companies are faced with great challenges. The evolution of formal organizations has changed how companies make choices and decisions. Business must make the decision of how to run and organize their companies and employees. Thus, they need to decide to ether run a formal bureaucratic organization: "bureaucracy is a top-down system: Rules and regulations made at the top guide every part of people's work down the chain of command" (Macionis, 2006) or to run an open, flexible organization. A flexible organization and the bureaucratic organization both have proven to be efficient in different areas of a business at different times.

A bureaucratic organization model or (organizational structure) has been practiced for many centuries; this structure can from when man decided to put a leader in charge of the organization. This leader was in charge of assigning the many different tasks and giving some of the members of the organization certain responsibilities. "An organizational structure consists of responsibilities, authorities and relations organized in such a way as to enable the organization to perform its functions; "(Tempus, 2001). At the turn of the twentieth century business in the United States were inefficient on the job and work performance within the organization. During this time managers did not have the information needed on how to produce at a higher rate with workers using the skills developed by earlier organizations.

Most organizations that were run by the bureaucratic model were dealing with the inefficiency of their hiring practices and processes. This style of running a company took the shape of a pyramid shape. At the top of the pyramid is used to represent the leader of the organization (CEO), then the executives, areas of management and finally the workforce. Responsibilities within the organization are delegated the same way from top to the bottom. The rules and regulations of the organization were conducted formally and in writing. This would also explain the consequences if negative action took place and if one broke the rules of the organization. Employees and managers communicated formally and in writing and the information was passed through the chain of command. These organizations were low in production from their employees, because they had no chance of promotion within organization. Women were better in producing because of their creativity, when men were more worried about their status within the organization.

However, in the 1900's many organizations began to change bringing reform, because the older style was not working any more. Organizations began to see that running an organization with the pyramid style was beginning to be replaced by the open, flexible structure that was shaped more like a football. This new structure ended defined job titles and responsibilities and dispersed them more fairly throughout the employees of the organization. The jobs that managers were in charge of delegating to the workforce now were being done by teams and were being performed in a comfortable environment.

Because of the increase of new technology organizations found the need for change and reform. Organizations began to analysis how jobs were performed to determine ways to operate and run the organization more efficiently. Organizations began to incorporate new methods, and incentives were put in place to generate higher productivity from employees. With this in place employees and management began to receive acknowledgement for their efforts of doing a good job. The next change that took place was when organizations began to hire women and minorities in the work place this was a big change from the traditional organizational structure. The organizations that did this increased gained more talented people that were willing to work harder for the organization.

This structure also allowed organizations to increase their job productivity by giving employees room for advancement if they preformed their jobs well. Job performance took on a new